Wrong reason, Right idea

     

        I note with amusement  that some ultra- left writer, obviously fighting writer's block,  has decided  the MIA/POW flag is "racist." Because I feel that fact should trump fantasy, allow me the following brief observation.

       In the Vietnam era there were the hawks who engineered the escalation in Vietnam (JFK, LBJ, both Democrats) and the President who spread the war to Cambodia, destabilizing its government and expediting the death of perhaps a million at the hands of the Khmer Rouge (Nixon, a Republican).  Supporters of both parties were loathe to simply acknowledge or admit the huge error that was the Vietnam War.

        For them this flag has seemed over the ensuing years to, in some measure, validate their insistence on fighting an unwinnable war in a country  which could (should) have been a friendly nation from 1946 on. All we had to do was tell the French that the age of colonialism was dead, and normalize relations with the Vietnamese, only recently free from China's control. Their civil issues were uniquely theirs. A nationalist leader (Ho) who thought that the idea of a French puppet king who spent  much of his time on the Riviera instead of at home, wished to unify the nation. Period!

         Instead, a succession of administrations from Truman to Nixon shrunk  from the public disapproval that might have followed an open acknowledgement  that yes, Ho's Vietnam was nominally Communist, but actually nationalist first, Communist second. Any sense of history would have shown that, far from being likely allies with China, the Vietnamese had been under China's yoke, off and on for almost 2000 years! Supporting Ho would have meant building an ally in South East Asia.  Ho begged Harry Truman to tell the French no, but Truman was facing a frothing, Red baiting  Congress which saw Ho Chi Minh as just another Mao, and would have burned him at the stake for even iterating such an idea.

        So, leap ahead 40 years and here we are. Some half wit reporter with too  much time and too few ideas, has decided to make this his mission - the POW/MIA flag is racist. It's not, but it is extraneous. Vietnam, more than any other war, left veterans with a myriad of opinions regarding why and how we were there in the first place.  Some came back scarred by what they saw as the wrong war at the wrong place for no good reason. Others came back feeling they had simply done their duty and resenting the reception some of them got here at home. For these groups (or some of them, many simply long to forget) this flag may remind them of fallen comrades.

        There was, as there always will be, a cadre of non- draftee volunteers who saw/see war as  George Patton   saw it - "Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base."  There will always be this group who believes force trumps reason. For them this flag is a symbol that allows them to wallow in the fiction that somehow they were engaged in something noble  instead of a failed attempt to impose their (and our) will on a small, largely agrarian, nation which was tired of war, but too determined to quit.

        When there were actual POWs in Vietnam (whether they should ever have been there or not) the flag served as a reminder that some Americans were indeed in captivity in a foreign land and that some missing soldiers were unaccounted for. That was then; this is now. There are no more POWs in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese have gone to every possible reasonable length to repatriate the remains of MIAs as they are found. I don't think the POW/MIA flag is racist, I think it's simply no longer relevant. where were the WWI, WWII, Korean War POW/MIA flags? Oh, that's right, there weren't any! So why this one? I believe it has much more to do with those who believe themselves to be super patriots because they will support any armed conflict anywhere anytime as a means of foreign policy, instead of a protective measure.

        So call this uber liberal nutcase what he is - an opportunistic twit, stirring a pot that has long since gone cold. At the same time, don't lose sight of the fact that he's correct , but for the wrong reason. There are no POWs, and the Vietnamese don't need our flag to tell them to repatriate MIA remains, they've been doing it for 35 years! If a private individual, unable to move on with reality, wants to fly it over their shack in the Ocala National Forest,  let them. But on public and government buildings? Why?  The POW/MIA flag is passé, extraneous,  and irrelevant to most Americans except Chuck Norris.